It's Kind of A Funny Story
by It'sTimeToDance
Summary: AU After an unfortunate incident one night, Pony decides to leave Tulsa.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note**

**Was up, party peoples? I am **_**literally **_**going to drop everything else I'm doing for this, because I feel like being one of those losers with 40 chapter stories and like 10000 reviews. This idea just kind of came to mind, because Ponyboy acts like a pretty well-behaved teenager, it it's very...abnormal. I want him to mouth off a little, then get into **_**huge **_**trouble. Like, **_**huge**_**. Now, I've never been crazy high before (maybe a little tipsy, that's it) so I'm just guessing on this. I'm going to make this shit **_**epic**_**. Chya.**

**Here we go...**

**Still comin'...**

**Almost there...**

Prologue

_I forgot just why I taste_

_Oh yeah, I guess it makes me smile_

_I found it hard_

_It was hard to find_

_Oh, well, nevermind_

-Smells Like Teen Spirit, Nirvana

I smelled something by the house, fire or something. Not like the whole place was burning down. Like someone dropped some paper or something onto the stove top, or dropped a smoke on the carpet. I don't know why it hit me like it did. Maybe 'cause I couldn't walk ten steps to save my life, and I needed something I could make sense of to hold on to. Everything's spinning in a colorful kind of way, even in the scarce early morning light. I could see light in the living room, cracking through the gap at the bottom of the cheap wooden door. I fumbled with the gate, my hands seeming like exotic plants to my own eyes. I blinked.

I heard two voices arguing in hushed, exasperated whispers. I heard bits and pieces, something about somethin about whatever. I took a drag from the dying cigerette squeezed between my fingers, fascinated by the outstream of wispy smoke floated around it, into the air like the spirit of something long gone. I looked at it, my hand on the doorknob now. I wondered who's spirit it was, how they got that way. Why were they in my Cools, anyway? Did they like Cools?

He pondered this as he turned the knob, stepping into the dimly lit living room. Darry was quick to his feet, his eyes startling in their inhuman, wild anger.

I wavered in my spot, smoke still fresh around my throat, my chest. Was his eyes red? Or orange? I couldn't tell.

"Four in the _goddamn _morning, Ponyboy!" he roared, his muscles clenched, his veins fat, deadly snakes constricted under his skin. I wondered it they'd break it, the skin, I mean. The muscles'd probably rip through his skin like toilet paper. The thought made me uneasy.

Darry was saying something, and I forgot I was supposed to listen, "Hmm?"

Soda, who was propped by the wall, probably there to keep Darry from ringing my neck, looked at me weird.

"Are you even listening?" Darry barked.

I nodded.

"I got a call from your teacher--at _work_--tellin' me you never _showed up _today!"

I can't think of anything to say. School...that was...today? "Whoops."

Darry makes this face, like he wants to smash something and throw up at the same time. I look at the wall behind him, trying to grab my bearings in the short seconds I figured until I'd be part of the carpet.

"Are you fucking _high_?" I hear him say.

"Nope..." I say, shuffling my feet. I think about it, "...yup."

I see Soda moan from his perch, shaking his head, saying something that I can't make out. I really, really need another smoke.

"Goddamnit..." Darry groaned, running a hand through his hair, looking all over the place at once, like the walls have all the answers. I imagine parenting books written out in dark blue ink all over the walls, built into every house, seeping in through paint and wallpaper and furniture when the need arises. This thought, for some reason, makes my laugh quietly to myself, muttering, "...walls of destiny." or something like that. I can't remember.

"Where'd you get it?" Soda's asking me with hesitance, like he's afraid of the answer.

"'S everywhere." I say, waving my hand around the living room, towards the door.

"You know what I mean, Pony." he says quietly. I try to focuse on his face, but it just ends up becoming two faces, three, four, five. I look somewhere else.

I shrug, suddenly needing to go to the bathroom. I try to get past the brick wall that is Darry. He grabs my shirt tale and pushes me back, telling me to stand there and don't walk away from him. I don't say anything.

They start talking to each other, from the same spots. Soda's saying I'm just a kid, I don't know any better, I never do anything like this, it's a phase. Darry says I'm never gonna get outta this hellhole at this rate, that I'm smarter then this, that I'm not that kind of kid, that I got a chance to do shit. I distance myself from it, taking another drag from the cigerette, suddenly bored with the whole thing. I need another smoke.

There talking to me now, I think. Darry's face is a strange color of red that I find boldly threatening. I think their saying somethin about school, or drugs, or something. I drift off again.

Someone hits me, I think. Right across the cheek. It's a fist, because I can feel the knuckles dig into my skin. Or maybe just the backhand. I can't tell. I'm momentarily taken out of my stupor to hear Darry tell me he missed an hour of work to come to the school and talk to my teacher, that he's out some money, he has to work extra time to pay the bills this month, that I'm selfish,a nd the while I keep my head where it was thrown, ducked, to the side, looking at the carpet. I realize I'm off balance, and lean against the wall next to me. Soda's yelling now, and Darry's yelling now, and it all swims in my ears like sharks, attacking each other, destroying everything aroudn them. I feel claustrophobic, and glance at the door.

With my hands in my pocket--the cigerette burning my finger--I walk out of the house, a sudden feeling of overwhelming guilt forming in my chest.

He's gotta work longer, harder, 'cause of me. Cause I'm a fucking screw up kid. I could work, if he'd let me. I've said, I think he was joking, that he needs me to get rich and famous so he and Soda could live down in my mansion. I don't think even he believed it.

I think there'll calling after me. I'm not running, or even walking fast, but they don't come after me.

So, I just won't be there problem anymore.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N You know, I never thought I'd be back into this series.**

I leaned against the pay phone, my arms crossed, the sun beating down on my bare arms. Sweat drips down my forhead, curving around the groove of my mouth. I look at the store window, where a clock is poised on the opposite wall. He's late.

Teh street is crowded with summer tourist, families bunched together, pointing this way and that way, fascinated by the bluntness that is New Mexico. A boy, seven or eight, with light blond hair and evenly tanned skin, bumps into my leg, which is stretched out onto the current of people. He looks up at me. I scowl. He turns and runs. Probably to his mother, or father, or nanny, or whatever. Spoiled brat.

Great, I can't help but think, I'm tunring into Dally.

The church bell rings far off into the city. Children, just out of school, scurry past in frenzies of pigtails and lunch boxes. The city, like most others, is now alive with after work rush and Friday excitment. Estabon, the man who owns the newspaper rack a few feet from my booth, runs a hand through his sleek black hair, sighing as a group of children grab for a candy bar at the top of his rack, knocking over the shelf of magazines. While he picks it up, the children run off with the chocolate. I'm tempted to help him, though I don't, instead looking out onto the far end of the sidewalks. The double road street is blocked by middle school students, only a year younger then me, cross the street, girls giggling at some unheard joke. They point at the slummed shops on either end of the walkway, apparently finding other's misfortune hilarious. I guess it is, depending on who's misfortune it is.

A man slips through the running children, slinking his way until he is standing right beside me, shifting his heels, looking every which way. He's in his late twenties, his skin the color of wet sand. His black, dull hair is shaggy, hanging into his brown eyes. He's wearing a plain white t-shirt, his jeans barely held up on his thin frame. His eyes are wide, and his hands shake, despite the heat, and a flop sweat drips down his neck and chest, staining his shirt with large pit stains. He, I can tell, is trying to play it cool, "Curtis?"

I look out into the crowded road, nodding.

"You got it?" His eyes twitch from person to person.

"Your late." Is my response.

He mumbles to himself in a bout of impatience, his palms slapping against his theighs, "I got caught up in something."

"Better been good." I mutter.

"You got it or not?" he hisses. Oh yeah, junkie.

"Depends."

"I got the money."

I take a drag from my cigerette, letting it slowly drift from my mouth, just to watch him skirm with impatience. I grew irritated at his jittering, so i slip the dime bag from my pocket casually, along with my lighter, pretending to light the already smoldering weed, "Stand still or I'll cut your throat out." I say in a monotone.

He stops shaking.

I stand there for a moment, not moving, nor averting my eyes. Calmly, I put the dime in the crease of my palm, and he does the same with his money. We slap hands, exchanging whichever we came for, and I'm still leanin against the booth post, looking forward.

"Nice doing buisness with you." I say, gaining my balance on the flat of my feet and drifting through the crowd, not counting the money until I'm in the local corner store across the street.

Two hundred and fifty, and reasonably high price for a semi-pure dime bag.

He baught a Pepsi and another pack of cigerettes, settling himself on the floor of the milk aisle, the glass door halfway open so the cold dries his sweat. The man at the counter sees me from his perch, peering over his newspaper, halfheartidly telling me to buy something or leave, and I tell him I already did, and he drops it pretty quickly, which I'm suprised by, but don't dwell on.

I look at the clock hanging over the manager's head, and figure it's time to go back to the booth. I close the glass door and slide up the wall, throwing the burnt Kools (**Thanks whatcoloristhesky**) and the empty Pepsi bottle in the plastic trash bin on my way out.

I froze as I got to the corner.

A girl, maybe a year or two older then me, reads a newspaper at Estabon's rack. He hair is bright, bright red, glinting orange off the afternoon sun.

She looked at me.

I looked at her.

I slipped away into the nearest back alley, vaguely wondering if my face had changed much in three years.

**Tulsa, OK**

Darry glared at the calender hanging beside the phone as he slipped on his shirt. The TV blared throughout the small house from the living room ajoining with the kitchen. Darry glanced towards it, seeing the same sight as always. Sodapop staring, stone faced, at the television, while Two-Bit and Steve ate their body weight worth of chocolate cake. Johnny stared at the cartoon with little interest, a cigerette wedged between his index and middle fingers, his arm resting on his raised knee.

He looked at the clock, the calender, wincing at what they both told him. He looked away, stepping in front of the TV, "Come on, Soda, time for work."

"I'm taking a sick day." he grunted, staring in the same direction.

Darry sighed, "You know you ain't sick."

"Personel day."

"Soda." Darry warned, flipping off the cartoon, "Work. Get dressed."

Soda's jaw clenched, not sparing a glance at his brother. He heaved himself off the couch and slipped into his room, coming back out moments later with his DX shirt half buttoned and his hair clean of grease, giving him a dishelved appearence. No one said anything.

The phone rang. Darry got it while buttoning his own shirt, wedging it on the crease between his ear and neck, "Hello."

"...Darry? Curtis?"

Darry frowned, "Yeah. May I ask who's calling?"

"Sherry. Cherry? Valace?"

Darry dimly recalled a Cherry Ponyboy had mentioned, three years ago.

"Johnny knows me." she offered.

"Yeah. Is there a problem?" She was a Soc, Darry remembered. What was she doing, calling here?

"I...I'm in New Mexico..." She struggled for words.

"Okay?"

"...I saw Ponyboy."


	3. Chapter 3

He slammed his fist against the table, the dirty plates shaking at the contact. From the corner of his eyes, he saw Two-Bit and Soda jump in their seats, looking more alert then either had in the last three years. Darry bit his lip as a sudden pressure grew in his chest.

"What do you mean he's in _New Mexico_?" he hissed, looking over his shoulder.

"Who's in New Mexico?" called Two-Bit.

"Shut up!" Darry barked back, running a hand through his hair and shifting on his heels, and to the phone, "_New Mexico?"_

Cherry, on the other end, stuttered, "He...I don't know. I _think _it was him. He looked...you know, different. I wasn't sure...I just though I'd let you know..."

Darry bit the inside of his mouth anxietly, stretching the telephone cord as far as he could as the boys in the ajoining room gathered at the doorway.

"Are you s_ure _it was him?"

"Who? Is it Pony?" Soda demanded, reaching for the phone, as Darry smacked his hand away irritably, "I'm on the goddamn phone, Sodapop!"

"....Yeah, I..." Cherry said. She sounded conflicted, unsure. Darry could hear the sound of a crowd, voices, laughter, in the background, and imagined her at a payphone in the middle of a sidewalk, a road. "Yes." she repeated.

"_Give me the phone!"_

Darry felt the phone fly from his hands, saw Soda reach for it, skidding to the opposite end of the room, holding his arm out as the rest of the gang grabbed and clawed, "Who is this?"

"_Soda_!"

He paused, listening, his face rising and falling, his eyes flashing with something Darry couldn't identify, saying something he couldn't hear over the shouts, the chaos.

"What? New Mexico?" he heard him shout in disbelief. Two-Bit pulled at the chord, and Johnny, at the back of the frenzy, reached over Steve's head, shouting, "Give me the _phone_!"

Finally, Soda muttered something on the other end, slamming the phone onto the receiver.

He turned to Darry, his face hard, with a certain gleam in his eyes that Darry couldn't remember seeing in years, "I'm going to New Mexico."

**A/N Sorry. Space filler. At a loss.**


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N Okay, here's the thing. I'm not a fan of OC's. There annoying and I hate them. **_**But, **_**if the goddamn kid was living in another state for three years, he probably would have met **_**someone**_**. This guy that I'm making is purley for convienence and will not have a gigantic purpose. So...**

I climbed the rusty fire escape onto the fourth floor ledge, throwing both legs onto the creaking wood and into the apartment that no one wanted. There was a guy passed out on the floor, probably the third time this week. I nudged his side some, and he woke with a start. I barked at him, just like I remember Darry doing, telling him to get the fuck out before I knife him in the gut. Albeit, half-heartidly, still contemplating the patch of red hair that may or may not have been Cherry Vallace.

Once the bum was climbing down the ledge, I fell back onto the dirty couch that seemed to drop two shades of green since the last time I sat on it.

The room was large, at least to Ponyboy, with little furniture and something blue growing out of every crack in the walls. It had a small bathroom, towards the side, without a door or sink, and brown spoltches on the ceiling tiles. It had enough electricity to power one lightbulb by the door. It was more like a squat then anything, seeing as, from what I knew, no one was paying any kind of rent for the place, and the building was probably being blown down for parking space in three months. I'd seen some burnouts hanging around the second floor, and an old lady wearing a plastic bag for a hat muttering to herself on the top, the fifth, floor, but other then that, the place was empty.

The place was empty.

--

Cherry Vallace twirled the stiff phone cord with her finger, nervously glancing at either side of the thinning crowds. It was a different phone, across the street from the one she saw him at, the one she'd called his brothers with. The hat she'd bought at a vender's stand scratched at her temples, and she kept her head ducked when the sun starting dissapearing behind the crowded city's overpass, leaving the sky all shades of pink and orange, when she saw him, striding back to the phone booth.

She flipped her hair---in a ponytail---away from her face, shoving the phone to her ear, repeating the _Warning _label stuck to the side of the booth so she looked like she were talking. The dial tone rung in her ear like a bullhorn, and she pulled the reciever away, grimacing.

Ponyboy leaned against his own booth, crossing his arms and listlessly searching the street. Now that she could see him, she noticed how old he actually was. Not old as in seventeen, how old he probably was. Older. The type of old you get when you see to much of life, and your mind grows faster then your body can handle. What looked to be a scar was running like a muddy stream down the side of his face, almost buried in the unkept hairline. His cheeks were lightly sunken in, just barely giving him the look of someone who hadn't eaten in days. Despite the rising nightime cold, he wore only an old, ripped white t-shirt that hung on him like a deflated hot air balloon.

Another boy--nineteen, probably--inched towards him, with his hands shoved in his pockets and his shoulders raised in a meek sort of shyness. He stopped next to Pony, and they muttered to each other, their lips hardly moving, before slapping hands, not really looking at each other, and disapearing back behind an alley.

Of course, Cherry Vallace was raised in a pretty good home, in a pretty good neighborhood, so she wouldn't know a dealing for a crack on the road had she not driven through the East end with Bob on occasion. It was subtle, quiet from years of experience, but she knew what it was.

"Oh, God, Ponyboy..." she groaned, reaching for the phone book swinging on a cable attached to the booth.

**A/N Another chapter outta the way. Yay. I wrote the first half months ago, and thought I'd finish it. Sorry if it's pointless :P**


	5. AN

Heeelllllooooo readers!

I know, you all want to kill me for the lack of update-ness, but this is urgent!

If you will direct your attentions to my profile, where you will notice a fic titles FANFICTION STREETS.

It is both a drabble and an open invitation to YOU, the reader, with one simple question in mind.

_What if all your favorite characters lived on the same streets?_

Don't let the summary nor the Twilight category fool you--it's for all fandoms.

So--GO!

p.s. again, sorry this is not an update.


	6. AN again

Hey, guys. Sorry I haven't updated anything in...well, in a while. I've taken a break from writing for a while. I'm starting my freshman year of high school this year, and I really need to get my shit together. This is gonna be mass-posted, so I'll post my individual messages for each story:

The Unfortunate Truth: I started this when I was twelve, so needless to say I've grown a bit since then. I do have the entire things plotted out in my head, and one day I do intend to finish, but for now consider this on indefinite hold.

Gone Baby Gone: This one I actually almost finished with. I typed most of it on my friend's computer, so it might take a while to get to it...but still. I'll get there.

It's Kind of a Funny Story: I feel really guilty about this one, because I promised myself I'd finish it...Anyway. I'll probably finish this during my next fanfiction binge.

Invasion: I SHOULD BE DOING THIS! This was meant as a comic relief, something to do when I'm bored...I'm bored SO OFTEN! I SHOULD WORK ON THIS! Feel free to cyber-smack me.

Soliloquy: I seriously wrote all the stories for this but, again, on friend's computer.

Playing With Fire: Consider this one up for adoption.

Remaining: Will finish during next binge. I actually like this one.

A Comedy of Errors: No one seems to care much for this one, so consider it dropped till further notice.

The Awkward Kind: Not feeling this one, I have to say. I pictured in my head a John Hughes like angsty romance with a tragic end, but, well...I'm not John Hughes.

No Such Things: This is completly out of my comfort zone and I have no idea why I started it. Up for adoption.

Also, I have a few stories in the works...all Twilight, aparently. Two are AU and one's a three-shot for New Moon. Again, I consider fanfiction like drinking: if your not addicted, you only do it when your unhappy. I am not addicted, and I'm pretty content at the moment. As you all know, I tend to have time periods where I update at a ridiculous pace, and then long stretches of time where I do nothing. Rest assured, however, I will not be content forever and as soon as I'm engulfed in an overwhelming wave of depression, most of these stories will be updated, if not finished. And I will post the new stories I have for Twilight. And we will all live happily every after.

The End


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